In the Unix shell, the tilde (~) is an abbreviation for the path to your home directory. (It has other expansions but this the meaning when the tilde is used as a separate word.)
Tilde expansion is the process of converting the abbreviation to the path to the user's home directory.
Example (not using ~)
/home4/susanQ/public_html/111/ is the Unix path to Susan Queue's 111 folder on shell.uoregon.edu.
Example (using ~)
~/public_html/111/ is the Unix path to Suzie's folder on shell.uoregon.edu
Example
$ pwd
/tmp
$ cd ~
$ pwd
/home4/susanQ/
$ echo $HOME
/home4/susanQ/
(~ is a synonym for the value of the shell's HOME variable)
URLs
In a URL, the tilde (~) has a related but different meaning: it stands for the path to your public_html folder on the web server.
Example:
URL:
http://uoregon.edu/~susanQ/
Corresponding Unix path on the server:
/home4/susanQ/public_html/
Example:
URL:
http://uoregon.edu/~susanQ/111/
Corresponding Unix path on the server:
/home4/susanQ/public_html/111/
